I had a brother, once

When I was about nine, and he was four, I think, he went away. He was so cute, he had a bunch of shiny copper hair, a nice smile and those big blue eyes. I loved to play with him, he was so little and funny. But one day he started moving things around the house, like small things that ran across the table to his little hands, and once he befriended a bird outside the window, it came so close to him that it accepted the food he gave it. My mother didn't believe me at first when I said that, but then she and dad started watching him closely, and I remember they talked of a thing called the Temple, after a while. Dad looked sad for a bit, but mum was so thrilled. She had an old picture, she always told me the woman in the picture was his grand grand grandmother, from centuries ago, and that she went to the Temple, and one evening they came into our room and talked to us. They told us that my little brother, Ben, had a special gift, like the woman in the picture. That he was touched by the light, and he could do great things, and that new people would come to test him and see if he was touched enough to learn how to use his gift for the Galaxy and the Republic. I was so scared, at first, I didn't want my little brother to go away. I screamed and hugged him, and he was so still in my arms. My parents were emotional too, mum said to me that giving a child to the Temple was a privilege and that he could live better with them than with us. I didn't understand at first, but they told me that the Temple was full of people like him, with his gift, and that their job was so important to the Republic, and he would have the chance to become a good person between them. We were just humble citizens, my dad was an architect, like me, and my mom was an artist and a painter. She told me that Ben could become something that they could never prepare him for, and the people at the Temple could help him with his gift and prepare him to be the best person he could be.

Some days after that, people from the Temple came to see my family. There was a tall black man and a creature with a mask on his face and eyes. They played with Ben and asked him a lot of questions, and then they came to me. They asked me if I loved him, and if I wanted him to be happy. Of course, I wanted that. The black man told me that he understand I was sad and didn't want to lose my brother, and he was right. He told me that Ben was going to live a life in the Temple, that he would learn how to use his gifts, and that he would be happy with them, but I was afraid that he would be alone and sad.

So they brought us all to the Temple, and we had the chance to see where he would live and grow. The school and the creche were so fun, and warm, that I even asked if I could stay with them too. But I was not gifted as him, so I couldn't. We hugged my brother for the last time, but every year, for the anniversary of the day he went to the Temple we received a picture and a few words from his teachers. It went on until he became a Padawan, around fourteen, and it was ten years since he left us.

We never forgot him, and I was still a bit sad, but I grow up being proud that my youngest brother went to become a Jedi. I got married and watched my children closely, in their youth, wondering if there was a hint of the same gift that he had, but apparently, that wasn't the case. It was a relief, surely, I didn't have to say goodbye to one of my children at such a young age, because I remember how conflicted my parents were, when we left him on Coruscant, in the Temple. They cried a lot, and I thought that it was because they didn't want to leave him behind, but then I understand. Sometimes it's hard to choose the best for your children, and you wish you can do everything yourself. But it's not always possible. He had great power in his little hands, and with great power comes great responsibility, and sometimes as a parent, your job is to accept that you're not the best fit to teach something important to your children. We knew nothing of the Force, we couldn't help him with it. We wouldn't be able to give him the proper teachings to understand and use his power in the best way, and it could easily hurt him and the people around him. Instead, he went on and became a great Jedi, and now I can read about him, saving the Republic and the galaxy with his power, against the Separatists that want to destroy our way of life.

So, yes, I spent my youth wondering how he was and if he was happy with the Jedi, but now I know he was. And every time someone at work asks me "are you related to that Kenobi?" I always smile.

Yeah... that's my brother.

(Across the Spider-Verse spoiler)

Lord of the Rings fanart! I watched for the first time recently and loved it

People I met for a few moments that live in my head forever.

"kill them with kindness" wrong. bat attack

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i dont like the idea that kids these days are doing their fandom rps with ai chatbots. that's how you're supposed to make lifelong friends as a weird really online teen.

this video is putting me in a daze i swear

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

I love the first season of atla

Nothing will dispell the "the curtains were just blue" myth faster than writing something yourself, because the amount of pretentious symbolism i am putting in my silly little fanfics is ridiculous. I mean SO much with these words, literally every single one of them. This fic has twenty five typos and zero correct uses of punctuation but if there's curtains you bet your ass I put thought into what colour they were.

though the movie might be cancelled, yuri on ice will live forever in our hearts. thank you yoi fandom, it's been real ♡

Randomly thinkin about Chilchuck today, and how he tries sooooo hard to self sabotage

like for example, other half foots on the island think that he's a greedy asshole who only cares about money, and he does nothing to try to disprove that

but then there's this omake at the end of book 9 that shows that people treat half foots fucking TERRIBLY and chilchuck started a union to protect them

and then in the bicorn chapter, he doesn't want Marcille to keep digging into his personal business so he tells her he CHEATED ON HIS WIFE

but he just COMPLETELY fuckin lied about that and made himself sound so much worse than he is bc he's afraid of being vulnerable with people and would rather everyone believes he's a shitty person so he can keep them at a distance

and the thing that's memed so often is that he refuses to help with fighting most of the time because it's not part of his contract

but if you take this lore into account (not gonna add those particular images to this post simply bc I've used them in so many posts already LMAO) along with this tidbit from the world guide:

then it's like. yeah he has to keep his weight low so if he gets killed or severely injured and has to be healed, that could be really dangerous for him. and even if he was healed at that point he'd end up being a burden to the party after that point, he would be too dangerously thin/sickly to be able to help.

Like, Chilchuck has so many things about him that APPEAR to be character flaws, but every single one of them has a very reasonable explanation. He just leans into the mischaracterization bc he's emotionally withholding and can handle people thinking he's an asshole more than he can handle opening up to anyone. he's such a well thought out and interesting character

i can’t stop thinking about how annabeth e-mailed percy the photo of her at dc but this doofus decided to print it and put it in his notebook to stare at her whenever he could. talk about dedication

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

had never heard of "mlp infection aus" until this month and ngl i still dont know what they are but. it made me want to draw some of them getting taken over by their cutie marks or something......